Patients with cancer rarely make clinically inappropriate demands

the ONA take:

According to a new study published in the journal JAMA Oncology, researchers from Abramson Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have found that patients rarely push for unnecessary tests and treatments despite physicians' claims that high medical costs are due to patient demands.

For the study, researchers analyzed over 5,000 patient-clinician encounters and found that 440 (8.7%) of those included a patient request or demand for a particular medical medical intervention. Of those, clinicians complied with 365 of the demands after deeming them clinically appropriate.

Of the 50 demands that were not clinically appropriate, clinicians only complied with seven demands. Results showed that 49.1% of demands were for imaging studies, 15.5% for palliative care interventions, 13.6% for laboratory tests, 5.2% for genetic tests, 3.6% for chemotherapy, and less than 1% for proton beam therapy.

In addition, researchers found that patients who had worse relationships with their clinicians and those actively receiving therapy were more likely to make requests or demands.

The findings suggest that patients demands are low and cannot be a key factor of increasing healthcare costs.

Patients rarely push for unnecessary tests and treatments despite physicians' claims that high medical costs are due to patient demands.

Physicians often blame patient demands for contributing to high medical costs, however, a new study involving more than 5,000 patient-clinician visits indicates that cancer patients rarely push for unnecessary tests and treatments from their health care providers.